Based on the study of fengshui and genealogical literature and fieldwork, this article attempts to analyze typical morphologies of graves in Fujian (Southern Fujian, Hakka community & Fuzhou, to be exact) and Okinawa and fengshui implications thereof. It is believed that the constructional forms of graves are linked to the gathering of positive qi (energy), the averting of negative qi and the receiving of water (prosperity), and thus directly associated with good or ill fortune and weal or woe. Particularly, grave-mounds and gravestones never follow set morphologies, which permits vivid manifestations of the ideology of mutual promotion and restraint between yin and yang (negative and positive principles in nature) and between wuxing (five elements) on such funerary artifacts. Yizifen or jiaoyifen (chair-shaped grave) and guikemu or leiguikemu (tortoise-shell-shaped grave) in folk parlance communicate symbolism embedded in these graves' morphologies by local people, while Jinshuimu (metal & water grave), a comprehensive expression, sheds more light on the close relationship between grave morphologies and fengshui beliefs. Though the morphologies of southern graves might embody Chinese cosmology, the diversity of localized grave architecture, coupled with the diversity of applied fengshui, complicates symbolism per se. A caveat is that the fengshui symbolic factor in grave morphologies should not be overstated; rather, a multidimensional approach allowing for a constellation of local folk cultural factors is justified.
